American U-2 spy plane shot down - May 01, 1960 - HISTORY.com American U-2 spy plane shot down Share this: American U-2 spy plane shot down Author American U-2 spy plane shot down URL Publisher A+E Networks An American U-2 spy plane is shot down while conducting espionage over the Soviet Union. The incident derailed an important summit meeting between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that was scheduled for later that month. The U-2 spy plane was the brainchild of the Central Intelligence Agency, and it was a sophisticated technological marvel. Traveling at altitudes of up to 70,000 feet, the aircraft was equipped with state-of-the-art photography equipment that could, the CIA boasted, take high-resolution pictures of headlines in Russian newspapers as it flew overhead. Flights over the Soviet Union began in mid-1956. The CIA assured President Eisenhower that the Soviets did not possess anti-aircraft weapons sophisticated enough to shoot down the high-altitude planes. On May 1, 1960, a U-2 flight piloted by Francis Gary Powers disappeared while on a flight over Russia.

The CIA reassured the president that, even if the plane had been shot down, it was equipped with self-destruct mechanisms that would render any wreckage unrecognizable and the pilot was instructed to kill himself in such a situation. Based on this information, the U.S. government issued a cover statement indicating that a weather plane had veered off course and supposedly crashed somewhere in the Soviet Union. With no small degree of pleasure, Khrushchev pulled off one of the most dramatic moments of the Cold War by producing not only the mostly-intact wreckage of the U-2, but also the captured pilot-very much alive. A chagrined Eisenhower had to publicly admit that it was indeed a U.S. spy plane. On May 16, a major summit between the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France began in Paris. Issues to be discussed included the status of Berlin and nuclear arms control. As the meeting opened, Khrushchev launched into a tirade against the United States and Eisenhower and then stormed out of the summit. The meeting collapsed immediately and the summit was called off. Eisenhower considered the “stupid U-2 mess” one of the worst debacles of his presidency.

The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was released in 1962 in exchange for a captured Soviet spy. Related Videos Pilot of infamous U-2 spy-plane flight shot down in 1960 over the former U.S.S.R to receive posthumous medal | Daily Mail Online Share this article Share He experienced 61 consecutive days of interrogation by the KGB and was tried and convicted for espionage and was set to spend up to ten years in prison, including seven years of hard labour. The U-2 pilot was hit by an anti-aircraft missile about 1,300 miles inside the Soviet border after launching from a clandestine U.S. military base in Pakistan, near to Peshawar.

A U-2 spy plane sporting fictitious NASA markings to support the cover story of CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers, whose U-2 was shot down over the USSR 5 days prior to this picture in 1960 Francis Gary Powers is paraded in front of the cameras by his Soviet captors (left) as the leader of the U.S.S.R Nikita Khrushchev (right) raged to the United States at the 1960 Paris Summit The helmut and the suitcase of American Air Force Pilot Francis Gary Powers who was shot down are displayed as part of an exhibition in Leipzig Bailing out of his aircraft and parachuting to safety, the Soviet's managed to recover the majority of the highly classified plane, precious surveillance photographs and Powers himself. When the capture of Powers and his aircraft was made public by the incensed leader of the U.S.S.R, Nikita Khrushchev, the United States at first denied the plane was used for military reconnaissance. They said it was a NASA test plane. The argument flared up during the nuclear arms talks at the Paris Summit between the U.S.S.R, the USA, France and the U.K. and led to their collapse.

During the summit, Khrushchev produced parts of the U-2 plane and displayed photographs taken by Powers, while he was paraded by the Soviets on national television. Facing embarrassment and abuse from the Soviet delegation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower refused to apologise for the U-2 flight and he canceled the summit according to the LA Times This photo, officially released in Moscow in 1960, shows the Russian people viewing the wreckage of a US U-2 reconnaissance plane shot down over Soviet territory on May 1st Eventually, Powers was freed from prison after a dramatic trade off for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel on Berlin's Glienicke Bridge. After returning home, Powers worked as a test pilot for Lockheed and then as a helicopter traffic reporter He tragically died when his chopper ran out of fuel and crashed in a field returning from a weather report. He was buried after his death at the age of 47 at Arlington National Cemetery in 1977.

Francis Gary Powers holds a model of a U-2 spy plane as he testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee after his release from Soviet prison in march 1962 ‘For almost 107 days, Captain Powers was interrogated, harassed, and endured unmentionable hardships on a continuous basis by numerous top Soviet Secret Police interrogating teams,’ reads the citation for the Silver Star. ‘Although greatly weakened physically by the lack of food, denial of sleep and the mental rigors of constant interrogation, Capt. Powers steadfastly refused all attempts to give sensitive defence information or be exploited for propaganda purposes, resisting all Soviet efforts through cajolery, trickery, and threats of death to obtain the confessions they sought as part of the pretrial investigation. ‘As a result of his indomitable spirit, exceptional loyalty, and continuous heroic actions, Russian intelligence gained no vital information from him.’ His son, who is now 47, had started petitioning the Air Force Board of Correction of Military Records to get his father the Silver Star. A portrait of Francis Gary Powers in 1977.

Powers was later killed while flying a KNBC helicopter in Van Nuys, California This was prompted by the awarded of the medal to two Air Force officers whose plane was shot down over the Barents Sea two months after Powers’ U-2 was shot down, who were interned and then released. The confusion with his military award has always been the fact that Powers was no longer a serving Air Force officer at the time of the U-2 incident and was working as a contractor for the CIA. However, records released in the early 2000s show that the U.S. Air Force was involved in his U-2 mission. ‘Nothing could have happened before 2000, when declassified files were released,’ said Powers Jr. ‘That’s what started the ball rolling.’ A woman looks at memorabilia that belonged to American Air Force Pilot Francis Gary Powers who had been shot down and captured on May 1st, 1960 by the Soviets while flying his "U2" spy plane on a CIA mission over Soviet territory Upon his return to the United States after his imprisonment, Powers received a cool reception from his countrymen.

He was criticised for not activating the self-destruct mechanism on his plane and for not taking his suicide pill before he was captured by the Soviets. However, when debriefed before the Senate Armed Services Select Committee which included George H. W. Bush’s father Prescott , he was found to have acted in the best traditions of the U.S. Military. When his son would ask him how high he was flying on May 1 1960, Powers would reply, ‘Not high enough.’ Read more: U-2 Spy Incident - Cold War - HISTORY.com Google Peeking Behind the Iron Curtain Alarmed over rapid developments in military technology by his Communist rivals in the USSR, President Dwight D. Eisenhower , who served in office from 1953 to 1961, approved a plan to gather information about Soviet capabilities and intentions. High-altitude U-2 spy planes began making reconnaissance flights over the USSR in 1956, giving the U.S. its first detailed look at Soviet military facilities. Did You Know? U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers carried a tiny needle filled with poison so that he could take his own life if he faced capture.

Powers chose not to use the needle when he was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, which led some critics to brand him a coward. Eisenhower was pleased with the information gathered by the flights. Photographs taken by the spy planes revealed that Soviet nuclear capabilities were significantly less advanced than had been claimed by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971). Eisenhower learned that the U.S., rather than suffering a shortage of weapons or a “missile gap,” as many American politicians claimed, instead had nuclear forces far superior to those of its Cold War foe. The Soviets were aware of the reconnaissance flights, because they could spot the spy planes on radar. For nearly four years, however, the U.S.S.R. was powerless to stop them. Flying at an altitude of more than 13 miles above the ground, the U-2 aircraft were initially unreachable by both Soviet jets and missiles. However, by the spring of 1960, the USSR had developed a new Zenith surface-to-air missile with a longer range. On May 1, that weapon locked onto a U-2 flown by 30-year-old CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers.

Soviets Shoot Down U.S. Aircraft Winging through the thin atmosphere at the edge of space, Powers was carrying out the type of top-secret mission he specialized in: flying a U-2 spy plane over the USSR to photograph military installations. If all had gone according to plan, Powers’ nine-hour flight would have taken him from Pakistan to a landing zone in Norway. Unlike previous U-2 missions, however, this one went terribly wrong. As Powers flew over Sverdlovsk (present-day Yekaterinburg, Russia), a Soviet surface-to-air missile exploded near his plane, causing it to drop to a lower altitude. A second missile scored a direct hit, and Powers and his aircraft began to plummet from the sky. The pilot managed to bail out, but when his parachute floated to earth, he was surrounded by Soviet forces. Powers landed in the center of a major diplomatic crisis. Eisenhower Issues a Denial On May 5, Khrushchev announced that the Soviet military had brought down an American spy plane, but he made no mention of capturing Powers.

Officials in the Eisenhower administration believed that little evidence of the plane’s espionage mission had survived the crash, so they responded that the aircraft was merely a weather plane that had accidentally flown off course. The Soviet leader quickly disproved that story, however, by producing a photograph of the imprisoned pilot as well as evidence recovered from the wreckage that conclusively showed it was a surveillance aircraft. The U-2 spy plane incident occurred at a crucial juncture in U.S.-Soviet relations. Eisenhower and Khrushchev were scheduled to join the leaders of France and Great Britain at a summit in Paris on May 14. The American president had hoped the Paris summit would yield new agreements on nuclear arms production and testing, but he recognized that the embarrassing U-2 crisis posed a potential obstacle to that goal. The Failed Summit Before the world leaders opened their Paris meeting, the Eisenhower administration took responsibility for the spy flights and admitted that the weather plane explanation was false. But the president’s confession could not save the summit. The U-2 incident had convinced Khrushchev that he could no longer cooperate with Eisenhower, and the Soviet leader walked out of the Paris meeting just hours after it began.

Soviet negotiators also abandoned talks on nuclear disarmament the following month. These events, which unfolded during Eisenhower’s final year in the White House, brought a new chill to relations between America and the USSR and set the stage for further confrontations during the administration of Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy (1917-63). While world leaders squabbled about the spy flights, Powers remained in a Soviet prison. In August 1960, he was put on trial for espionage, convicted and sentenced to 10 years of confinement. He ultimately spent less than two years behind bars. Powers received his freedom in February 1962, when he and Soviet agent Rudolf Abel (1903-71) became the subjects of the first “spy swap” between America and the Soviet Union. After returning to the U.S. and leaving the CIA, Powers eventually worked as a helicopter pilot for a Los Angeles TV station. In 1977, he died at age 47 in a helicopter crash and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Tags BBC ON THIS DAY | 10 | 1962: Russia frees US spy plane pilot About This Site | Text Only 1962: Russia frees US spy plane pilot American spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers has been freed from prison in the Soviet Union in exchange for a Russian spy jailed in the US. Gary Powers was sentenced to 10 years in a Soviet prison after his U-2 plane was shot down over Russia in May 1960. But on Saturday the former US Air Force captain, 32, walked into West Berlin across a bridge separating the city's east and western sectors. At the same time Russian spy Colonel Rudolph Abel crossed in the opposite direction. Colonel Abel had served five years of a 30-year term for running a spy ring in the US. His sentence was commuted by US Attorney-General Robert Kennedy two weeks ago. However, the Russians have always denied any knowledge of Colonel Abel and even now maintain Mr Khrushchev freed the US pilot simply as a "goodwill gesture". Another American, student Frederic Pryor, was also freed from the eastern bloc at the same time as Gary Powers. Mr Pryor had been held in East Germany without charge since last August.

'Weather plane' Gary Powers' capture in 1960 caused an international crisis. Initially the American authorities believed there was no evidence left of either plane or pilot and tried to convince the Russians the U-2 had been a weather plane. However, the Russians then produced Mr Powers alive and well claiming he had admitted spying for the CIA. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev demanded an apology from US President Eisenhower and when none was forthcoming plans for a superpower summit in Paris collapsed. US authorities have said it will be at least a week before the freed airman is allowed to meet the press. In the meantime they will no doubt want to establish how Mr Powers came to be shot down when U-2s were believed to be impregnable to anti-aircraft fire. They will also be keen to find out exactly how much Mr Powers told his captors about the spy planes. There was speculation during his trial that he had said more than his oath of secrecy permitted. The release of the American pilot comes a year after that of the two US airmen whose reconnaissance aircraft was shot down over the Barents Sea in January 1960. Four of the crew died.

Authorities in the USSR claimed the plane had been in Soviet airspace. The two survivors, John McKone and Freeman Olmstead, were held in prison in Moscow for a year before being freed. Milestones: 1953–1960 - Office of the Historian Milestones: 1953–1960 U-2 Overflights and the Capture of Francis Gary Powers, 1960 On May 1, 1960, the pilot of an American U-2 spyplane was shot down while flying though Soviet airspace. The fallout over the incident resulted in the cancellation of the Paris Summit scheduled to discuss the ongoing situation in divided Germany, the possibility of an arms control or test ban treaty, and the relaxation of tensions between the USSR and the United States. Francis Gary Powers with model of U-2 plane As early as 1955, officials in both Moscow and Washington had grown concerned about the relative nuclear capabilities of the Soviet Union and the United States. Given the threat that the nuclear arms race posed to national security, leadership in both countries placed a priority on information about the other side’s progress. At a conference in Geneva in 1955, U.S.

President Dwight Eisenhower proposed an “open skies” plan, in which each country would be permitted to make overflights of the other to conduct mutual aerial inspections of nuclear facilities and launchpads. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev refused the proposal, continuing the established Soviet policy of rejecting international inspections in any form. Meanwhile, Khrushchev also claimed that the Soviet Union had developed numerous intercontinental ballistic missiles, which only motivated the United States Government to look for new ways to verify developments in the Soviet nuclear program. The U-2 spyplane program grew out of these concerns. The U-2 was a special high-altitude plane that flew at a ceiling of 70,000 feet. Because it flew at such heights, it was thought it would be possible for the planes to pass over the Soviet Union undetected by radar on the ground. It was important that the overflights be undetected, because normally an unauthorized invasion of another country’s airspace was considered an act of war. Operated through the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the first flight over Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg) took place on July 4, 1956.

The flights continued intermittently over the next four years. It was later revealed that the Soviets did pick up the flights on radar, and the United States lost a plane over the Soviet Union in 1959, but as long as there was no definitive proof connecting the flights to the United States there was no advantage for the Soviets to raise the issue publicly lest it draw attention to the Soviet inability to shoot down the offending flights. Powers Trial On May 1, 1960, the situation changed. On the eve of the Paris Summit and during the May Day holiday, CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers took off from a base in Pakistan bound for another base in Norway, with his planned flight path transgressing 2,900 miles of Soviet airspace. Near the city of Sverdlovsk Oblast in the Ural Mountains, Powers' plane was shot down by a Soviet surface-to-air missile. Powers ejected and parachuted safely to the ground, where he was captured by the KGB, and held for interrogation. The plane crashed, but parts of it were recovered and placed on public display in Moscow as evidence of American deceit.

Although the capture of Powers provided the Soviets the concrete proof that the United States had been conducting the flights, it was not immediately clear what the impact would be for the Paris Summit. At first, and before they had confirmation that Powers had survived, U.S. officials claimed that the U-2 had been conducting a routine weather flight but experienced a malfunction of its oxygen delivery system that had caused the pilot to black out and drift over Soviet air space. On May 7, however, Khrushchev revealed that Powers was alive and uninjured, and clearly had not blacked out from oxygen deprivation. Moreover, the Soviets recovered the plane mostly intact, including the aerial camera system. It became instantly apparent that the weather survey story was a cover-up for a spy program. Khrushchev had publicly committed himself to the idea of “peaceful coexistence” with the United States and the pursuit of détente, so from his perspective, if U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower denied any knowledge of the spy program and the United States apologized, he would have continued the summit. Spying was common, and of course, the Soviet Union had its own agents reporting on developments in the United States.

Eisenhower, however, refused to issue a formal apology to the Soviet Union; he had taken a great personal interest in the spyplane program, and considered the violation of Soviet airspace and the reconnaissance of Soviet nuclear facilities serious enough to personally approve each flight. On May 11, Eisenhower finally acknowledged his full awareness of the entire program and of the Powers flight in particular. Moreover, he explained that in the absence of an “open skies” agreement, such spy flights were a necessary element in maintaining national defense, and that he planned to continue them. Wreckage of crashed U-2 Plane Eisenhower’s statement left Khrushchev in a difficult position. If he did nothing, that would be tantamount to acknowledging implicitly the right of the United States to spy. But any action Khrushchev did take had the potential to scuttle the upcoming conference and his larger plans for a Soviet-American détente. Ultimately, he demanded that Eisenhower apologize for the past flights and promise to discontinue them as a precondition for entering into the planned negotiations on Germany. Eisenhower’s refusal led the Soviet delegation to leave Paris just as the summit was about to begin.

After extensive questioning by the KGB, Powers was convicted of spying and sentenced to three years in prison and seven more of hard labor. In February, 1962, however, he and a detained American student were traded for a captured Soviet spy, Rudolf Abel. Although Eisenhower refused to end the U-2 program, it was quickly overtaken by new technology, as satellite images replaced aerial photographs. For his part, Khrushchev abandoned his attempts to cooperate with Eisenhower, opting instead to wait for the inauguration of the new U.S. President, John F. Kennedy, elected to office in November, 1960. U-2 Spy plane Incident - Gary Powers By Martin Kelly Updated April 30, 2016. On May 1, 1960, a U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers was brought down near Svedlovsk, Soviet Union while performing high altitude reconnaissance. This event had a lasting negative impact on U.S. - U.S.S.R. relations. The details surrounding this event are to this day still shrouded in mystery.

Facts About the U-2 Incident Following World War II , the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union grew increasingly wary. The USSR did not agree to a U.S. 'Open Skies' proposal in 1955 and relations continued to deteriorate. The U.S. instituted high altitude reconnaissance flights over the Soviet Union because of this aura of mistrust. The U-2 was the plane of choice for the spying missions. This plane was able to fly extremely high, with an overall ceiling of 70,000 feet. This was key so that the Soviet Union would not be able to detect the planes and see this as an act of warfare for violating their airspace. The CIA took the lead in the U-2 project, keeping the military out of the picture to avoid any possibilities of open conflict. continue reading below our video What are the Seven Wonders of the World The first flight in this project occurred on July 4, 1956. By 1960, the U.S. had flown numerous 'successful' missions over and around the U.S.S.R. However, a major incident was about to occur.

On May 1, 1960, Gary Powers was making a flight that left from Pakistan and landed in Norway. However, the plan was to divert his flight path so that he would fly over Soviet airspace. However, his plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile near Sverdlovsk Oblast which was located in the Ural Mountains. Powers was able to parachute to safety, but was captured by the KGB. The Soviet Union was able to recover most of the plane. It had proof of America's spying over their land. When it was obvious that the Soviet Union had caught the US red-handed, Eisenhower admitted on May 11th to knowledge of the program. Powers was interrogated and then put on trial where he was sentenced to hard labor. Mysteries The conventional story given to explain the crash of the U-2 and the subsequent capture of Gary Powers is that a surface-to-air missile brought down the plane. However, the U-2 spy plane was constructed to be unassailable by conventional weapons. The major benefit of these high altitude planes was their ability to stay above enemy fire. If the plane was flying at its proper height and had been shot down, many question how Powers could have survived.

It would have been very likely that he would have died in the explosion or from the high altitude ejection. Therefore, many individuals question the validity of this explanation. Several alternative theories have been put forward to explain the downing of Gary Powers spy plane: Gary Powers was flying his plane below the high flying reconnaissance altitude and was hit by anti-aircraft fire. Gary Powers actually landed the plane in the Soviet Union. There was a bomb on board the plane. The newest and probably least probable explanation offered for the downing of the planes comes from the pilot of a Soviet plane involved in the incident. He claims to have been ordered to ram the spy plane. Admittedly there is little evidence to support this claim. However, it further muddies the waters of explanation. Even though the cause of the incident is shrouded in mystery there is little doubt to the short and long term consequences of the event. Consequences and Significance The Paris Summit between President Eisenhower and Nikita Krushchev collapsed in large part because Krushchev demanded an apology that Eisenhower was unwilling to give. Gary Powers was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 3 years imprisonment and 7 years of hard labor.

He only served 1 year 9 months and 9 days before being traded for the Soviet spy Colonel Rudolph Ivanovich Abel. This incident set in motion a pattern of mistrust that culminated in the Cuban Missile Crisis, a time when U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations reached an all time low. No one can predict if the Cold War might have ended sooner had the U-2 incident not occurred. Fifty Years Later, Gary Powers and U-2 Spy Plane Incident Remembered Fifty Years Later, Gary Powers and U-2 Spy Plane Incident Remembered April 30, 2010 The engine of the downed U-2 plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers on display in Moscow in November 1960 Share On May 5, 1960, the world first heard the news that an American aircraft had been shot down over Russia. Officials in Washington initially claimed the plane was an unarmed weather research plane. But the aircraft was not engaged in meteorological research, it was a U-2 spy plane deployed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA had been engaged in aerial espionage over Soviet Union since 1956, with missions designed to photograph military bases and other sensitive sites.

The Kremlin had known about the U-2 program all along but had been unable to respond. By 1960, it had developed the technology needed to launch countermeasures. On May 1, it used a newly designed S-75 surface-to-air missile to shoot down a U-2 plane and its pilot, Francis Gary Powers. Powers, who had taken off from a U.S. military base near the Pakistani city of Peshawar, made a brief stop at Incirlik air base in Turkey before heading for the Urals. He was downed over Sverdlovsk. The CIA was certain that Powers was dead. State Department spokesman Lincoln White attempted to portray the flight as a civilian mission that accidentally strayed off course after the pilot's oxygen supplies ran low. "It is entirely possible the plane continued on automatic pilot for a considerable distance and accidentally violated Soviet airspace," White said. Powers in his special pressure suit for stratospheric flights, in Russian detention in November 1960 But as the United States was soon to learn, Powers was not dead. His plane had landed nearly intact, and he had been taken into Soviet custody.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announced the capture in an address to the Supreme Soviet, and leveled an angry threat against the United States if it refused to abandon its CIA spy missions. "Don't you fly into the Soviet Union! Don't you fly into the socialist countries!" Krushchev demanded. "Respect sovereignty and know your limits! If you don't know your limits, we will strike!" Signal Event The incident went on to become a notorious chapter in the history of the Cold War. But its roots stretched back to at least 1954, when American intelligence workers realized they lacked reliable data on the Soviet Union's offensive arsenal -- particularly its nuclear weapons, and delivery systems like missiles, submarines, and strategic bombers. Reports from agents in the field were few and far between. So the idea was hatched to use aerial photography as a new way of collecting information. In order to do that, U.S. intelligence had to solve two problems at once: a) creating a high-altitude plane that could fly beyond the reach of Soviet fighter jets, and b) designing a camera that could capture accurate images from that range. Francis Gary Powers Jr.

and the U-2 wreckage at Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow on April 30 The camera came first. Edwin Land, the head of the CIA's scientific and technical council, worked with astronomer and optician James Baker to create a camera capable of capturing images from an altitude of 18,000 meters. The camera's resolution was four times greater than that of any aerial cameras at that time. It could capture the image not only of a person on the ground, but also of the rifle in his hands. It also used super-thin film that allowed for as many as 4,000 shots in a single overflight. Engineer Clarence Johnson followed by creating the U-2, a sleek aircraft with long, glider-like wings that could reach altitudes of 21,000 meters -- far higher than the reach of the Soviet fighters, missiles, and radar of that time. The U-2 had its first test run in 1955 and surveillance flights over the Soviet Union began the next year.

A 'Normal' Guy Powers, a veteran of the Korean War, was one of the first pilots to conduct the mission, and made numerous flights before he was shot down in 1960. His son, Francis Gary Powers Jr., was born five years after his father's capture in the Soviet Union. He says that for all his adventures, his father was, at heart, a simple man. "My father was a normal person. He was raised in southwest Virginia, in Appalachian coal country. He was the first of his family to go to college. He wanted to fly airplanes from a very early age, and upon graduation from college in 1950, he enlisted in the Air Force," says Francis Gary Powers Jr. "My father was somewhat shy, an introvert. He didn't like to speak in front of crowds. And that all changed after he was shot down and subjected to a trial in the Soviet Union, and then came home and gave lectures and appearances. But for the most part, he liked to be with himself or very close friends." After his crash, Powers was interrogated for months by the KGB before being convicted of espionage and sentenced to 10 years in jail.

Less than two years later, he was released in a swap for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. Powers was initially criticized by the U.S. government for failing to destroy the plane's camera and photo records, and for not committing suicide, before the information could fall into Soviet hands. With time, however, Powers was exonerated and went on to work as a test pilot and a traffic reporter. He died in a helicopter accident in 1977 at the age of 48. Powers (right) listens to the verdict being pronounced at his Moscow trial for spying. Powers' son explains what drove his father as a young man to leave the Air Force and begin working with the CIA. "He's indicated that, as an Air Force pilot, he liked the duties, he liked flying the airplane, he liked the missions he was on as an Air Force pilot," he says.

"However, when he was approached by the CIA to fly a new, top-secret airplane -- doing something patriotic for his country that would also pay better than an Air Force salary -- these were all motivations for him to enlist and volunteer for the U-2 program." Mind The Gap Powers conducted a total of 27 flights over the Soviet Union and communist-bloc states. Powers Jr. says the work of his father and other U-2 pilots had great military strategic significance for the United States because it assured U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and American defense planners that they were not falling behind the Russians militarily -- that there was in fact no "missile gap." The discovery, historians argue, saved the United States billions of dollars in needless arms costs. Powers Jr., who has co-founded the Cold War Museum dedicated to relics from the U-2 incident and other Cold War events, says the realization also gave the U.S. more leverage in future negotiations with the Soviets. "As a direct result of the U-2 flights the American government, President Eisenhower knew that there was no missile gap, there was no bomber gap," Powers says. "He knew that the Soviets did not have more weapons in place than we did.

And that was used to help with negotiations between Eisenhower and Khrushchev at the time." Ironically, before the plane carrying Powers was shot down, Eisenhower was forced to keep to himself his knowledge that there was no missile gap, or risk revealing the highly successful U-2 missions. Khrushchev, for his part, knew about the CIA's U-2 program but was unable to expose it for fear of revealing to his public that the Soviets lacked the technical skill to shoot them down. He later wrote in his memoirs: "No matter how hard we forced the engines of our fighter jets we could not get to those 'flyers' that flew, so to say, laughing at our efforts, morally offending us. This created even more tensions between our countries." Legendary U.S. broadcaster Walter Cronkite, who covered the story, later recalled that "each man, for his own reasons, needed to protect the secrecy of the missions." With the downing of Powers' plane, that secrecy -- and a pivotal chapter of the Cold War -- was over.

Most Popular U2-Spyplane - home U2-Spyplane Export (PDF) The U2 Spy Plane The U2 spy plane Incident had happened on May 1st, in 1960 when the pilot Gary Powers had been shot down. Powers was 1,200 miles into Soviet Russia airspace, near Sverdlovsk about 850 miles east of Moscow. The U2 spy plane went down by a surface-to-air missle. It was constructed to be unassailable by conventional weapons. The major benefit of these high altitude planes was to stay above the enemeys fire. People think that if the U2 spy plane had been at its probably high and had been shot down that the pilot Gary Powers could have survived. They don't think that he would of died in the explostion or from the high of altitude [[#|ejection]]. President Eisenhower had been informed of the afternoon that contact had been lost with the U2 and that the plane was probably lost. Eisenhower had then announced there was to be an investigation into the incident. It was stated that it was possible for the weather plane to might have wondered into the Soviet [[#|air space]] by accident.

They had thought that after pilot Gary Powers was having trouble with his oxygen equipment. Khruschev, the president of the Soviet Union had announced that the Soviet military had been shot down by the American spy plane and captured the pilot. The downing of the U2 spy plane had sparked the battle between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. it led to the collapse of the Paris Summit of the Cold War. The conference was help to forge agreements that would ease the hostilites and the suspicions of military build up and surprise attacks. This image was an image of the [[#|newspaper article]] about the downing of the U2 Spy Plane. This is one of the planes that had been blown up by the Soviet Union. This is a map of the areas that the U2 spy plane had traveled. Downed spyplane still a mystery, half a century later — RT America A U2 spy plane was on a mission to film Soviet military bases when the aircraft was hit by a Soviet surface-to-air missile. Half a century on, the incident is still full of mystery. The CIA called it their “invulnerable spyplane.” The U2 was a phantom.

Top secret and a masterpiece of aviation technology, it was designed to fly over Soviet territory undetected, taking unauthorized surveillance pictures at altitudes that were unreachable for Soviet missiles and fighter planes. But on May 1, 1960 a Soviet surface-to-air missile targeted and took a U2 out of the sky in what was to become a renowned incident that would affect international relations and policy in the US and Soviet Union for many years to come. “I remember the commander turning to me and saying I should be ready to engage live targets,” recalled Mikhail Voronov, a retired Red Army officer. “Naturally, the tension was huge. We didn’t know for sure that the plane was just an intelligence aircraft. And what if it carried a nuclear bomb on board? When it came down all of us were triumphant.” Once the plane was hit the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, managed a dramatic bail out and was captured shortly after parachuting down on Russian soil. But Krushchev purposely omitted any information about the pilot. The US, assuming that the pilot was dead and the plane destroyed, issued a detailed statement claiming it was a weather plane that had crashed after the pilot had experienced “oxygen difficulties.” But it was a risky deceit.

What the Americans didn’t realize was that not only was Powers still alive and being interrogated, many parts of the U2 spyplane were still essentially intact, complete with espionage equipment including a surveillance camera from which photos were later developed. The incident set US-Soviet relations back greatly and resulted in humiliation for Eisenhower’s government, who’d been caught lying. Powers was eventually given a 10-year sentence for espionage but was exchanged for a member of the KGB a few years later in a high-profile spy swap. On his return home, Powers, due in large part to the significant amount of misinformation given out by both sides during his time in captivity, was given far from a hero’s welcome. “When my father returned home, he was shocked to discover that there were editorials written in the press that he’d defected,” remembered Francis Gary Powers, Jr. “He’d landed the plane intact. He’d spilled – or they’d thought that he’d spilled his guts and told the Soviets everything he knew. So, to him this was a little bit of a shock.

He was disappointed at that time that the American government did not do more to help set the record straight.” He gave an interview to RT, where he said that the Cold War was on an irreversible path, even if his father had not been captured fifty years ago.

Question: What was the name of the American pilot captured by the Soviet Union when they shot down his U2 spy plane in 1960?
Answer: GARY POWERS